Part XII: Second Chances

There is more still to learn of what Cotton was up to before he was sealed in his watery tomb. The visit with Dust, his final, is our last element. There was a time when Cotton needed Dust, and that was before they had even met. He had always had the book Sidewinder Sleeps Tonight as a guide, but to know there was another hero like the one he had read and thought about for so long was an entirely obsessive thought for him. There was much to Dust’s career that Cotton believed would be illuminating, from what he had originally set out to accomplish to what he had later took on in his dormant years. The son of the Blue Beacon surely had many things to offer beyond the advice he would later provide the increasingly troubled soul.

“Your son didn’t deserve to die like that,” Cotton says, having crawled back down the tower, resting. He would have gone to the museum, but he doesn’t have the strength. Dust tells him it’s unnecessary. Behind this institution is good enough. In later days, even this won’t be safe; there will be battles here, deaths, and the earth everywhere will know blood. For now, though, a final rest.

“Death doesn’t look for merit,” Dust says. “Maybe an old man, a father, doesn’t deserve this, but for a man at war? He didn’t die in vain, did he? He knew what he was doing. I’ve seen others fall with less dignity, and I have seen their families grieve and lament without shame. I didn’t want that for myself. When my father died, I told myself the same things. I have made a life of it. I still hold no regrets.”

“You are, as always, an inspiration, Nicholas,” Cotton says. “You will probably never know how much you’ve meant to me.”

“The same could be said on my part,” Dust says. When the young Nicolas Sanders discovered what he could do with his body, he was playing in the mud at school. The teachers were telling him to stop, but he was playing with a friend he’d lost, whom he was once told he couldn’t sit with because there were seating assignments to the contrary and damned were the consequences if a six year old and now friendless boy would enter the daunting world on his own again; and in that moment, he couldn’t have cared less how much trouble he could get in. He continued to slap around after every warning, until he looked down and noticed that his left foot wasn’t so much in the mud as a part of it. As he stared at it the final warning came and he was told to go stand against the school for the rest of recess. Once more he was separated from his friend, but he couldn’t notice that now. Oh, he was bitter enough to spite the school for the rest of his tenure there, but he couldn’t help but marvel at his foot, which was covered in mud as he made his way to the building. He pulled the hood of his jacket around him, and the world was reduced to his foot. He didn’t want to clean it, not just because of what he’d seen, but because he was afraid how much would be gone when he was done. And what did it mean?

Nicolas wouldn’t think about it again for months. Then, in the quiet of night, he awoke to find his foot asleep. He couldn’t get the feeling back in it not matter how much he shook it around, and then he lifted his blankets and saw why. It was a pile of sand. He nearly screamed, but he fought the impulse. His father was already gone, and his mother would not be able to handle it. Nicolas kept his terror in his eyes, lay his head back down, and slept for the rest of the night. He had heard that when you sleep, no matter how much you toss and turn, you always end up in the same position you went to sleep in, and this was the thought to which he clutched. There were many nights Nicolas couldn’t sleep, but this wasn’t one of them. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he was understanding. At school again, where he had become forsaken because he drew himself away from others, he willed his foot to sand again, and was in the process of attempting more when a ball struck him. The other kids were playing, never noticing him, and only now did they stop to look in his direction. He now had their object of interest a few feet away. Without thinking, unmindful of where it would land, he threw the ball back, someone retrieved it, and he was left alone again. He looked at his foot, and saw that it was solid again.

He practiced for years, because he knew immediately what he would do with this power. He had his father as his example. Always at night, after darkness had taken the interest from other souls, Nicolas would slip away and see what he could do, how Silt, the Sand Man, could help. There was never a question of whether he would seek revenge on his classmates. What was there to avenge? His own inability to blend in? it was his own failure, not theirs. That was a matter of resentment, not anger. Anger was a tool of action, not inaction. In later years, there would be other youths too desperate to understand this, who would consume the national interest with their tragedies, but Nicolas had no rage to fuel. All he had was a burning desire to express himself in the way he could be understood. He longed for what his father could never provide, and that was a sense of belonging. The Beacon had never belonged, and the business with the Alarmist never made it easier. As Silt, he found he belonged everywhere. As a soldier, drafted to fight in a war, he lost that feeling again.

Silt in the years leading to that experience, emerged as a hero the city of Traverse could depend on. He wouldn’t merely offer his assistance to the community, but he would help cultivate it as well. He gave speeches, even at his old school, to students, because they were stuck in their own worlds, who didn’t understand words that knew them. This didn’t bother Silt, because he understood these youths, too. He spoke to them not to educate them, but so that they felt included. Merely to be there, that was what they wanted, and even though he had never been a part of the, he had shared this. As Silt, he was there, and he could make a difference. He was the beloved son, even as his father watched from his accustomed distance, having given it up. They never spoke of this, even when the end was approaching.

Once brought to another land, Nicolas left the Sand Man behind, and took on his burden of the war. Did he know what they were fighting for, or whether there was ever a chance of victory? Did he know that there were those perverting the experience? Of course he did. His father had known these things, too, and that was a generation that thought it was okay to win at the cost of leveling entire cities. Were there cities in this war to level? This was a battleground with few boundaries, few limitations. This was a war pitched in a country that had been divided. There was a north and a south. And long after this, there still were, and yet there could not be less connecting them. Why pretend? That was what troubled Nicolas more than anything, even more than the reaction he was hearing about from back home. He was no longer a hero. The world was changing, and leaving him behind again.

When he returned, Nicolas found himself unwanted, derided, and abandoned. He turned to his identity as Silt, and discovered the same was true in this guise as well. The people no longer trusted him. They no longer believed in heroes, not the kind he was, anyway. What was a Sand Man, anyway, but a man who could never be known? He lived in a dream, and that dream was shattered. In the history of wars, there was never one with a more simple goal in mind than the one for which he had fought. His nation had wanted to stop something. And because it was so simple, it was rejected. And what did Silt want? He wanted to, like his father, stop the spread of corruption in his city. He came to understand that things were not as simple as he had once thought, because it was easier to assume they weren’t. It was easier to assume that there were no good or bad people, but victims. And it would have been so much easier if everyone who had ever considered this thought had uttered it, because no one, no matter how much they embraced it, understood it. Instead, they rejected those who did. Nicolas Sanders, Silt, was one of them. He believed that he would die alone, a failure.

He did not, however, give up his efforts. The Sand Man persisted in his adventures, now refocused in his interest in educating the city, but in more concentrated form. Hated though he was, he saw to it that the next generation know that they were not wasting their time, that whatever good they did, however little they saw in their results, they didn’t need vindication to know they were doing the right thing. He was Switchblade’s inspiration in taking on the dangerous path of the bloodsport, in which he would show his enemies that their own merciless ways could be held against them. He would do exactly what they did, take a pound for every pound they did. He was the retaliatory avenger, and for a long time, his every measure was successful, until he realized what price he would have to pay. It was in these moments that Switchblade took on his own apprentice, the Eidolon, and when these moments were over, he made the final, inevitable sacrifice.

Nicolas watched as the Eidolon took wing. Nicolas himself had finally drawn into seclusion, because he had never meant to see a student bring about his own destruction. As powerful as he had been, he gave it all up, because of Switchblade’s death, and because that death had been a warning. All the years Nicolas had spent turning his body into sand, he noticed, had not come without a price. In the jungles, he had felt pain every time he volunteered for reconnaissance, blended into the mud that was everywhere. He couldn’t understand why, at night, when he could find a dry place somewhere above the other men and release himself into a dry state, all he did was hurt. He hurt because he was wearing his body thin. He was on the same road to self-sacrifice he had led Switchblade onto, neither ever understanding, or so he had at first allowed himself to believe. Switchblade had known. He had been a martyr. Nicolas had only understood it after being shown. In a way, the mentor became the apprentice, the father had become the son. Xenon was then old enough to understand, too.

The Eidolon in his own way took on the legacy on the Blue Beacon, of Switchblade, of Silt himself, and yet not for a single day was he able to handle it with any real sense of composure. He hid it with a constant stream of snapping wit for years, but inside, and in his eyes, he couldn’t handle the pressure. On the day he murdered the Cad, he found Nicolas for the first time, discovering that Silt had held the reformed villain Calypso in his trust already. This was like a final straw. Viper killed Calypso in the museum that day, and set Nicolas into liquid for the last time. His body could no longer handle that stress, and the Eidolon was the one who snapped. He left the museum and murdered the Cad, and went into his own retirement. When Nicolas found himself again, he went in search of the Eidolon, and found him in his own mind, trapped for a self of guilt he could never handle, and yet Nicolas couldn’t have been more pleased. His life’s work hadn’t been a failure at all, but a success.

All he had ever wanted was a sense of belonging, and this was what he had given the Eidolon, a place to call home, his own mind. He had given the troubled man a release, and when he had nurtured the Eidolon back to a normal perception, he gave him peace of mind as well, a means to control this need to control reality. Nicolas had never sought this man out, which was what made the accomplishment all the more spectacular. What’s more, his own son was not the troubled man he had expected to find, either, and the Eidolon was the first to congratulate Nicolas, and to, in all gratitude, take Xenon under his wing. The Eidolon never truly returned, but the hero did.

“What do you hope to accomplish now?” Dust asks. He believes that all things that can be done have already been done. He can’t see what more still waits.

“Your son’s killer,” Cotton says. “He’s still out there. I owe you enough so that there’s only one thing left for me to do.”

“This warmongering,” Dust says. “I have always been one to embrace it, but I have never understood it. We sacrifice our own lives for those of others, for ideas. We sacrifice, and hope we are remembered, for the great deeds we are always hoping we can accomplish. I believe I have had my victories, and yet I see even now that I have not always had the lasting impact I believed I would. And I wonder what impact would suffice. Is there any end to this, Cotton?”

“You told me there wasn’t,” Cotton says. “You told me that we would have to find our contentment with that. Ours is to fight, because that is what brave souls do, what the only right thing is to do. What would we be if we didn’t fight? What could we have accomplished, or ever hope to? Achievement comes with sacrifice, because we are always losing something of ourselves. We are dying a little bit every day, aren’t we? Did you tell me that? The moment we are born, we begin the progress of death. To begin is to anticipate a conclusion. Many of us don’t understand that. They don’t understand that when they refuse to fight, or must be roused. You have always made it your business to do the rousing. That is how you’ve become a champion, Dust, in your old age, reclaimed the power in your arms that the advancing years have robbed of you. You and I both have withdrawn ourselves. That is what the truly brave do, I have come to believe. They are not the ones who leap out in the front of the battle and demand their pound in flesh, but the ones who yield in the back and anticipate what the victory will cost. Victory is a cost, because it is the same as defeat. It is another event in an inevitable chain toward another battle, because there is no rest, only other battles. You helped me see that, Dust. You helped me see that pacifism is no victory, but defeat. It will amount to a greater loss in time than the attempt in battle could ever achieve. Your father, the Beacon, do you know what his life meant for me? He was broken down, defeated by a war, and yet when he returned home, he eventually built himself stronger than he ever was, not the same brave warrior he had been, but a smarter, cagier man who knew what the risks meant. I don’t know that you ever understood him, if you will mind my saying so. I don’t think it did you any wrong; in contrary, I think it made you stronger, because you discovered for yourself what it took to take on this challenge, and you approached it accordingly. You have been an inspiration to me, just as your father was, and the Sidewinder a century earlier, who told me retirement wasn’t a failure, wasn’t a retreat, or a concession, but another way to start again. It was his building Viper was thrown from. And I believe the stories that say Elijah Humbert fought at the Alamo, too.

“You once talked to me like this, Dust, and I am returning the favor. You gave me a second chance, and I am giving you one as well. You have lost your son, and you can’t fight in this war. You should, by all rights, consider yourself a miserable failure, and yet, I refuse to believe that even for one day in your life, you have. For this I admire you, as I always have. With your abilities, with your father’s agility and your son’s light, you have seen and been a part of a world I could never understand, no matter how much control I have brought to my own. And yet we have shared that world. And I shared responsibility over your son, for a brief time, before his death. I could never express my gratitude for being allowed that in a thousand lifetimes. He was a good boy, Dust. Have you truly understood that? For this you may grieve another night, even while the pain is still fresh and the funeral games linger.

“He died in this war, and you and both know what that means. Do you know how he died? Has anyone ever told you? He died in my arms, Dust, in my own arms. I saw into his eyes, his peace with what befell him. You should only ever be proud of him. The look on his face, this was what he wanted, what he ever wanted. He died in a war and his death didn’t bring victory any closer. In many ways, it made victory look more distant. Godsend saw to that, but looks are only ever deceiving, aren’t they? That has been our weapon, our greatest weapon, what united the both of us beyond everything else. We have different tools, and the same tools. Our greatest weapon is our ability to command the stage, to own it, isn’t it? Does it matter what it looks like?”

“And now you’re plotting your exit, aren’t you?” Dust says. “You know what you’re planning is suicide, to walk directly into a trap?”

“I have already fallen into a trap,” Cotton says. “We are always falling into traps. You told me that, don’t you remember? Risk is part of the game. Do we have our own traps? That is what our opponents don’t understand, what they never see. They are too busy thinking themselves clever to see that. This is all one inevitable fireball, and the stage is going to burn. Can it still be called a victory? You can tell me that. Your father can tell me that.”

“They called my father’s a victory,” Dust says. “They never allowed me to call mine one, because they were too busy rejecting it. War is a terrible cost to pay, but it must be paid. Do you see utopia anywhere? There is always sacrifice to be made to achieve peace of mind.”

“I wonder who your mentor was,” Cotton says.

“I was my own mentor,” Dust says. “To some extent, my father was, but I had to train myself. I only ever had myself. You had books an examples, and people constantly quoting their philosophies to you. It’s a wonder you still stand. What has been your cost, Cotton? What have you given up? I gave up a son. What have you lost?”

“You mean besides my second life?” Cotton says. “There is always a price, of course there is. Some are more invisible than others. Some pay a higher price to achieve more, and their pain is the greatest, and least knowable. I don’t think we want to know it. That’s what I have come to decide. Great pain shouldn’t be known. It becomes an object of guilt, of pity, of resentment, of disbelief. What is great pain? What is great sacrifice? I wonder if you can tell me that, Nicolas?”

“I have already told you the sum of my existence,” Dust says. “Others have done that, too. Has it been enough? I believe so. I believe you’ve turned out better than any of us, the old fools. I wonder, how did you take Switchblade’s death?”

“I took it as I take any death,” Cotton says. “As I am taking Viper’s. It is a moment to mourn, to commemorate the passing of someone great. It isn’t just about sacrifice, and isn’t enough to say that they accomplished something, because the living will always remember their dead. The important thing is to remember the simplest thing that they could do. They were strong enough to live.”

“And strong enough to die,” Dust says.

“And strong enough to die,” Cottons says. “I’m not sure if any of us accomplish anything greater than that, in the end. People are always talking about a will to live. Is it because that’s what we’re constantly keeping together, that will? Without it, are we that fragile?”

“You suggest we’re stronger,” Dust says.

“I suggest nothing,” Cotton says. “The only thing I know is there always seems to be something left to be done. That is what successive generations see. And that is what I see before me.”

“I cherish your wisdom,” Dust says. In the state his body has known for a decade, in this cloud of so many particles suggested in the name he has taken for himself, he has already moved on. He really did die the day Viper killed him in that museum. He has been lingering, as if a ghost. His body is unique enough so that his mind was able to remain on this earth, and his body resilient, just enough, so that he could reclaim it, in this insubstantial form, and yet in his presence, few are able to tolerate him for long. In many ways, he had to relinquish his son to Cotton, and in just as many ways, he wanted to, and in some ways, his son has now joined him. When he sees a glimmer of light now, he wonders if it is Xenon.

Such a moment passes. He leaves Cotton to the business that soon enough ensnares the Eidolon beneath the Palomar. Cotton has no regrets, no inner torment. Not like he had before, not anymore. He has lingering thoughts, desires he know he won’t be able to shake, but Dust, as he has for so long now, serves as a gentle reminder of what he’s gained, what can never be taken away, because it has already been given. This is a war, and there are losses all around him, but if there is a defeat ahead of him, there is victory, too. He has made sure of that. He would never have allowed himself to fall into a simple trap without having first understood and accepted what would happen. This is a calculated sacrifice he was always fated to make, and with that, he long ago made peace. What is left to cling to? He has already given everything, and has already seen what course the war will take without him. He returns to the rhythm of his breathing, in this chest below the river, just to the side of a city he pledged his life to. There is peace in this.

Part XI: Thicker than Blood

“Do you know that they were all set to bring Dad down?” Malcolm says. He and his brother have been sitting in the mayor’s office for a good ten minutes, neither speaking, and he suddenly introduces this thought. “It seems his performance has been lagging. They were going to raid his operation, maybe replace him, maybe see what the city is like without a boss. They were set to do this, and then the war broke loose, after Xenon’s death. Amazing, isn’t it, how one little incident can change that?”

“It wasn’t Xenon’s death that persuaded them,” Odin says. “It was your election. We all wish you would take a little more credit. Your idea, for instance, has been working well, in case you hadn’t noticed.”

“It’s chaos out there. Both sides are becoming more brazen. I’m destroying the city,” Malcolm says. “You call that a success?”

“I call it a strategy,” Odin says. “The National Guard is going to be coming soon, you know. Of course you do. Who do you think they’ll target?”

“Imagine, our father being taken out,” Malcolm says, “because he’s gone soft. When have you ever known him to be soft, even when he was still acting like that, like an even more supercilious Capote? The day changed, but he never did. My reforms? He claims it was his idea, but you can see it in his eye. Our Benjamin is still the same. It’s the world that’s changed around him. They going to remove him, not because he’s changed, but because he hasn’t. This war has produced a new environment of accountability. If you’re not capable of playing under the radar, like a Ulysses Kincaid, you’re a lame duck. Even Rancor would have felt the pressure. They prefer subtlety now. They want control, but they don’t want it flaunted. It’s the way they’ve always done it, I suppose, the sea of power. They are afraid, is the real answer here, they’re afraid that they won’t be able to pass their own test for much longer. They want scapegoats to throw around, unless the public begins to understand that our little democracy is more aristocratic than it’s been led to believe, even though the truth has always been in plain sight. The public is blinded by a useful myth.

“I’m not so arrogant to believe I won this office by any other method than what I’ve just described. Had I run without the reputation of my family, I wouldn’t have stood a chance. Who would have heard of me? Who would have misplaced their trust in me? I talk. That is the extent of my cunning. I have been fortunate enough so that I have been able to cultivate this meager ability, and its appearance has served me, along with my family. Yet not a day has gone by since the election that I haven’t felt like a fraud, Odin. I want to relinquish this office. And I make decisions like this in the meantime. The city is more dangerous now than it was a month ago, ten years into a war, Odin. I have made it easier for our friends to operate, but that has only unleashed a lethal combat, more deadly in one day than one month. There were those seething, Odin, seething at the opportunity. We mark ourselves among depraved men. They are filled with anger, and this war has directed that anger to a toxic degree. Once it ends, we will have discovered that the genie has escaped the bottle. If we win, we lose. If we lose, we will have sealed a history of shame. That was never what we wanted, was it? We were only ever in the pursuit of great things.”

“Some losing causes are remembered as noble, as bold,” Odin says. “They may remember us that way, as conquerors who were finally vanquished, as they always are. Does that make you happy, to think about it that way?”

“I wish it did,” Malcolm says. “There are no good days for us anymore.”

“If it makes you feel better, I am preparing to make things right again,” Odin says.

“What do you mean?” Malcolm says.

“I am going to cut away the cancer that has infected us,” Odin says. “The Barracuda.”

“There is great danger in that,” Malcolm says. “How do you hope to accomplish this?”

“I have secrets, Malcolm,” Odin says.

“I am aware of them,” Malcolm says. “Are you aware of mine?”

“We all are,” Odin says. “You are a politician first, but you are still regarded as our greatest warrior. Some know me as Unity. Everyone knows you as Malcolm Bidd. Don’t underestimate yourself. You were elected as much for your name as your talents. Names can only carry people so far. You have exceeded everyone in every way. Your old schools honor you, or have you forgotten? Would you like to make a visit? You won’t easily be forgotten, or derided, by history, Malcolm. How could you possibly fear that? You are better than all of us. I have been only recently trying to catch up, to measure up to a life that has exceeded every expectation, every dream. You are bigger than this city, Malcolm. The nation adores you, too. What do you think that means?”

“I think it means nothing,” Malcolm says. He is not one to mince modesties, only to sometimes fill an image. He does that most often when he is agitated with someone. When calm, he is rational, above the capacity of others. “I would not accept anything else. I want to give this seat up; why would I take any other? I believe that in days past I imagined something, and for a long time I believed in that image more than I was living in the reality of it. Did it take a war to do this? Perhaps it did. I feel shame for that, too. The time is coming when I am going to have to prove myself. I believe I will fail. I believe that when I have been truly tested, I will prove to be unworthy of the challenge. Is that so morbid? You call me a success, but I have never put these abilities to the test. I have walked through exercises and never seen if I were up to their counterparts in reality. I’ve heard what Unity has done. You’re more ready than I am, Odin. I have prepared Barracuda for you. His cancer will soon be eliminated. What will I have to boast of, meanwhile? Godsend is in retreat, the Eidolon incapacitated. Do you know I decided that myself? I am a coward, Odin. Don’t you see? I have never truly been worthy of all that has been handed me. What have I done? I am bringing about the final ruin of this city. Am I to be applauded for that? And they wanted to eliminate our father. Do you see the irony? What did he ever do that was half as terrible? And I did it for him. I wanted him to be proud of me. Is that sad? I can’t imagine it as anything else. I’m a failure, and when the time has come, I’m going to prove it in battle, too. I don’t sleep anymore, Odin. I can’t.”

“You should try sleeping when you know how much responsibility you have for this war,” Odin says. “I made a mistake. You want to blame yourself because of our father? He blessed my union with Elizabeth. That was a far bigger mistake than you could ever make. I made an enemy of Godsend. I brought you what you see as your doom. How do you think that makes me feel? The Solomons have left themselves out of this war. They aim to succeed you. Even with Cinder dead at the hands of Manner, they stand before power they haven’t known in decades. You want to know how this war will end? With the balance of power shifted. That’s what the war has been about this whole time, and that’s what’s going to be the result. We win, we lose. We lose, we lose everything. Neither of us is going to be alive at the end of this.”

“These are grim thoughts for you,” Malcolm says. “I have only ever known you as the bright-headed optimist. Have your experiences in this war really changed you that much? Then the wages have been too high. You have earned maturity at too great a cost. But then, these are increasingly dangerous times, all the more so because we continually allow ourselves to believe that we are advancing. Tell me, though, are we at the future everyone knows so well yet, the one with the flying cars and clones? They have those in comic books, but comic books don’t know what reality is. They cheapen themselves when they invent new technology to cover whatever logical gaps they’re having this month. That’s why they aren’t taken seriously, because they’ve allowed themselves to fall into a complacency where this is okay, where they don’t have to ground themselves in anymore reality than they think they need to. They pretend they do, but they only end up pandering. They want to know what real heroes are like? Look around. They’re too busy looking at themselves. Do you have a plan yet, Odin? Don’t take your focus for granted. Look around you, see what’s out there. I think it would be good for you to do some exploring. At a time like this? Yes. There’s none better. You’ll never find the world to be a more lucid place than when it’s threatened. People are less concerned with their problems than with the perception of them. That’s when they talk, Odin, and that’s when you discover what the world is really like. You will hear what people think then, and you can discover how they are interpreting things. That is all we’re ever doing, interpreting. Accuracy is never the issue. All that I’ve been saying about my place? I don’t now. Maybe I’m right and maybe I’m not. I’m beginning to reflect now. You will always hear the truest thought first, if you have heard anything at all. It is only when someone has found to think that they will put a different air on.”

“We never really talk about our father,” Odin says. “We take him for granted, I think.”

“If that’s true, then that’s what he wants,” Malcolm says. “I assure you, he never speaks about us. We are his future, but he is still concerned about the present. Why shouldn’t he be? He will outlive us both, you know. Can you imagine that burden? I think he’s always known that. It’s why he’s always sequestered himself, because he has been preparing. He has not been doing a very good job of it. He fears to lose us, and so he has spent a lifetime trying to fool himself into thinking he never wanted us in the first place. It is the same way with Clayton Neville. He believes he has only recently entered the path toward Barracuda. He has spent a lifetime preparing. This is the life he has always wanted. He misrepresents us because he has for so long misrepresented himself. There are files, Odin, of things he has probably hidden from himself, not to mentions others, certainly the government he once served. You should have seen his face when he was standing in this room. He has always been too eager. Have you seen that? Maybe you have to look for it, because he masks this, too. I’m not sure how aware he is of these things himself. He no doubt believes, as he always has, that he is only ever doing the right thing. Yet he has made two sets of dangerous enemies, and he is so blind to this fact that he would willingly target the Eidolon. I sabotaged him, you know. The Eidolon, despite what everyone, including our own father, believes, is quite safe. I have been pumping a steady stream of oxygen into his coffin. You did know of these things?”

“I hadn’t, actually,” Odin says.

“You can’t interfere, though,” Malcolm says, remarking on the eagerness that has flooded his brother’s own eyes. “I have always respected the Eidolon. I am giving him a test, and I am testing my foe as well. Neither you nor I will free the Eidolon. He emerges on his own power, or that of Godsend’s. This is the end of that. Is this a cruel game I am playing, another mistake? I don’t believe so, but I have been wrong many times before. I am more often wrong than not, I’ve come to understand, as we all must. At any rate, I think it’s time we were off to our duties. You have much to prepare for. I have a city to run in place of my father.”

Odin readily agrees. The eagerness is still evident in his eye, as is his self-awareness of this. Malcolm watches as his brother struggles with his good nature, walking out of the mayor’s office lost in thought. Malcolm is too, as he always is. He is a constant brooder; he always has been. He has always taken on so much responsibility, as an older brother and for his brother, as his father’s son and for his father, and as a caretaker, guardian, and warrior of this city, which he was charged to shepherd. He lost one of its flock and has now found himself expected to recover it, even though his philosophy is different from this thought. He believes the many are more important, and that he would be reckless to think any other way. The many in this instance require a great deal from him. He was not joking when he told his brother that he expected to forfeit his life in this conflict, that the approaching hour demands it, as inevitable, as necessary, as duty. What has he done with his life to deserve this? Nothing. It will be of that moment, that he brings it upon himself. He believes he will live long enough to see his city burn. There is very little time now for this to be accomplished. Malcolm only wishes he could know how he will be remembered. He has been writing all he knows. He is a constant student, and he sees only one way out. It’s a bitter pill.

Part X: Rocks and Shoals

To watch a war is to know there are people dying, and that you are a spectator. How does that work? You watch because you are not participating, and there are a number of reasons why that may be. The first and most obvious is that you are not physically capable. You may be missing vital limbs, for instance. Go ahead and read that as a joke, too, there’s no one stopping you. This is not a funny story, but there’s no reason to believe you can’t find humor in it. That would be one reason, anyway, a physical inability to participate, however that may be interpreted. Some come back from a war like this, and when the next war happens, they end up in this category. Then again, others won’t let that stop them. A hero known as Manner will make that evident as this conflict draws nearer to its conclusion.

Another reason why someone could become a spectator to someone else’s horror is that they have decided they don’t agree that it is worth fighting over. They see the war as a mistake, so they let bad things happen and gossip over it, reflect on how terrible a mistake the whole business was in the first place. This is okay, because that’s a part of human nature. It’s a direct reflection of how wars happen in the first place, how two sides can clash over issues they’re not willing to talk about, because things have gotten so bad they think they can’t, because they imagine a great divide only bloodshed can cross, only a patch of jagged earth painted crimson can overcome. We like to find reasons to not do things more than to try and accomplish what must be done, because there are always so many distractions, we choose what we want to focus on, and talk about the rest, because talk can be accomplished without much effort, unless it’s to a point where we don’t want to talk about it. Confused yet? There are observers in this Traverse War. One of them has already been mentioned, La Femme, who is familiar to Godsend, the Eidolon, and others as a colleague in the Latter-day Allies. She happens to be one who’s even more removed from the ordinary plane than Godsend because she has the element of being something of an embodiment, a representative as much as anything of a basic human template. She is a feminine ideal, not the only one, because there are many, but one that suggests the power women are capable of. She is also French, like Brother Jack.

In one of her distant places, she is watching the battlefield with a couple of friends, Bodhi and Samsarra, who also have chosen to not participate. “I told them it was a mistake. The whole world knows it was a mistake,” La Femme says. “Now they’ve gotten more of us to join their cause. Jack, my countryman, I understand. He has always allowed himself to be driven by his passion. The Staged Man, though, I was surprised about. I thought he had more wisdom.”

“I have always known him to possess that,” Bodhi says. He is Godsend’s only rival as the world’ most powerful champion. He is less aggressive, and thus less well-known, but for years he has been quietly going about his mission, which he regards as sacred. All corners of the globe know him, all peoples. He doesn’t prioritize among populated areas, and he rarely is found in battle, so his absence is no mystery. He is not here to judge, though he is prepared to offer his own thoughts. “They are better off now with him present than they were before. They will make fewer mistakes.”

“Mistakes are all they’ve been making,” La Femme says. “The tragedies are mounting, the abuses of power they allow alarming. We should put an end to this ourselves, bring our own judgment on them.”

“What would you have us do, Emmanuelle?” Samsarra says. She is Bodhi’s constant companion, La Femme’s counterpart to Godsend, whom they are all aware is chief on her mind. Where there is turmoil and strife between the latter, only harmony between the Indian flames. Still she is here to judge. Samsarra sees turmoil and strife in more places than one. She sees what motivates La Femme, and also what the source of this emotion is. The war is troubling, because its tax is indiscriminate. The city will burn, and because of the war, no one within it will escape the suffering to come. “We see that there are two sides. One we have ourselves fought against, the other we ourselves have fought alongside. They are wasting themselves against each other now, over a useless cause they have only exacerbated. They think they are fighting over a mere matter of control. They are fighting because they have become accustomed to fighting. That is the only reason, but it is not something they are aware of, those who are active in the war. What they see is a matter for which there is only one resolution: defeat of the enemy. How do you propose to alter this view for them?”

“Weaken their chances of victory,” La Femme says.

“They are doing that themselves,” Bodhi says.

“Then I fail to see what the problem is,” Samsarra says.

“They continue to fight,” La Femme says. “We are being irresponsible if we allow that to continue. You see what they’ve accomplished. Godsend and the Eidolon, who were supposed to be the strongest of them, have splintered. One is unaccounted for, the other has taken a reckless course that will bring about his own ruin, which will not only be disastrous for his own cause, but for all of us. We do not stand to profit from this. That is why we must act, make them see the error of their ways.”

“An act which is easier in thought than in action,” Samsarra says. “It astounds me that we are talking of this war as if it is a bad thing, even now. Who is attempting to defend control of this city other than a collection of the worst impulses mankind has to offer. Why are we, in turn, defending them? Shouldn’t we simply take our positions among the ranks of the invaders, whom we’ve trusted for years, with our own lives?”

“What troubles me is how easily we’ve demonized the defenders,” Bodhi says.

“They’re monsters,” La Femme says. “It’s not hard when they’re monsters.”

“Not all of them are,” Bodhi says. “There are those who wield power who may be counted among that number, but the majority of them, they aren’t, or they have been made so by ourselves. The story of Viper is well-known, and he was vindicated in his fear by the fate we have learned. The one of Barracuda, however, I believe would be equally enlightening, if not moreso. The Americans created this man, because they, too, were watching. What are we doing here but escalating the tragedy?”

“Spare me the bleeding heart synopsis,” La Femme says. “We do not dictate the sad courses of human life. We are here as observers, not puppeteers. Their mistakes are their own. Don’t give them anymore power than they’ve already assumed for themselves, in their hubris. This war is a direct result of their own morbid fascination with their exaggerated senses of self-importance. Godsend is our primary case, but he is not the only one. What did the Eidolon accomplish, in his spiral of self-destruction, than the unraveling of everything he had sought to accomplish? This is his city, we shouldn’t forget, the troubles there things he was most familiar with. A war has broken loose there, in one sense, because he allowed it to happen. For ten years, where was he? Where was this champion, this instigator? There were problems there before him, and there were problems after him. He returned recently and now has accomplished the defeat of his hated foe Viper, in league with Godsend. We know already what this means. We know that there are others more powerful yet. We know that the mayor of this city is the greater threat, because he is in plain sight.”

“You speak of Malcolm Bidd, the pacifist,” Samsarra says. “He has never done anything to provoke them. He does more in detriment of the cause you ascribe to him than to aid it, because if he is their great champion, then Traverse is already lost, gained again, however the outcome may be interpreted.”

“The fool of your analysis,” La Femme says. “He is the devil who convinced the world he doesn’t exist. Don’t you see? He is the most dangerous man there. He has declared martial law. Is that the decision of pacifism? It’s the act of tyranny. We all know what it means. If we don’t end this now, the tragedy reaches its zenith, without a conclusion to benefit anyone.”

“Then how do we do that?” Samsarra says.

“We bring judgment to the invaders,” La Femme says. “They have taken the role themselves. We are called to reclaim it. They were wrong. The city was corrupted in a pressure tube, and a war resulted. Take away the offending element and you relieve the pressure, undo the damage. You don’t see Bidd as a threat, and you don’t understand why. Because he is capable of order, and he has demonstrated that in the only way this war would understand, by introducing chaos. Do you see? He has the power to dictate the course of the war. He wields true power. Now that he has revealed this, why would we need to wait longer to put an end to this? War is not something we condone. War is something we are meant to prevent. And yet here is a war certain among us have actually participated in, taken sides in, fought in. We allowed it to happen; why let it continue?”

“You spoke of wisdom earlier,” Bodhi says. “Let me tell you what I know of it: Wisdom is something you earn. It is something gained from experience. It is not knowledge, it isn’t common sense. It is a thing that elevates human thought above petty concerns and conflicts, separates man from his baser instincts, which he is ever trying to overcome. Wisdom is a tool, but it is not something easily applied. We see a thing, see it for what it is, but what do we do about it? Wisdom is the course through which we discover our destination, not the means in which we achieve it. Wisdom is seeing a mistake, not the correction of it, because it is not a solution, but the presentation of a problem. Wisdom is human nature, the awareness of it. It is more common than we believe, but seldom recognized. It is more often ridiculed, because it is not present in the popular consciousness, which sees only the questions of life, because it is only concerned with answers. Wisdom is the question, not the answer; wisdom forms the question and does not expect to find the answer, a problem that knows no solution.

“Who is wise, you ask? More often than not, the outcast, because he has the value of perspective. Why is there a war raging in this moment? There is always war. War is constant. This war is confined to a single city. It has a singular goal in mind, and has never in ten years strayed from that thought. It is a surgical knife. It is an element of fate. Those participating in it have no perspective. They see only the final goal, because that is all they’re capable of. Why do we watch? Because it is not our arena.”

“You wouldn’t fight even if it were right in front of us,” La Femme says. “You don’t fight because the fight is never picked with you.”

“I wonder if there is a reason for that,” Samsarra says.

“I don’t fight because this war is wrong,” La Femme says. “It doesn’t involve me, and it shouldn’t, because it should never have happened. You want to talk about wisdom, like you understand it, like it even matters? This is my wisdom: Instead of recruiting more fighters, instead of bringing in Brother Jack, my countryman, and the Staged Man, they should have started sending their fighters away. Bidd is creating order there? So much for it! Let him! Whatever they were seeking to accomplish there, it was never necessary, and it becomes less and less so every day. And yet they persist. Do you call that wisdom? I call it foolishness, as I have since the beginning. They have followed Godsend into war, Godsend who is the champion of justice. Where is the justice here? I can find none. He himself hasn’t championed it there. The trail of the dead is proof enough. He is faultless? Let me be the first to witness. I have known him for many years. I have fought beside him, too. I have been his dearest ally. Yet I will not stand by as this carnage continues, and I will not aid him, or his enemy. The Eidolon? His removal from that scene will hopefully be of some permanence now. He has done no one there any good, but rather festered in that city. He stumbled, and because he stumbled, because he was a fool, as we have all said, time and time again, this war was brought to Traverse. I do not pity them. I find myself sympathizing more with the dead.”

“Your angry words have never served you,” Samsarra says. “We are meant to stand in judgment? Who are we to wield such power? I for one reject it. We observe. For what purpose? Do we offer our services, do we aid weary warriors, or do we tell them that they are wrong? I wish there were answers to these questions. Bodhi, forgive me.”

“That is unnecessary, Sarra,” Bodhi says. “Emmanuelle, calm yourself. We are witness to a war. That is not reason enough to become warlike. Let us devote our minds to other matters, I say. There are better uses of our time.”

This council ends with those words. There are others who talk like this, still others who write, or make speeches, or debates. Some even make jokes, yes. The world is continuing as it always does. Some are entirely ignorant of these events, either because they have their own problems, or they have their own concerns, or because their way of life is so drastically removed from this that they could know or understand any of this. And yet they are not so different as others may think. There are also those who are aware, and choose not to care. There is a war? They have their own lives to worry about. There is a war in Traverse, in Alabama, in America? They are far removed. How does it affect them? Why should they be concerned? It affects them and it doesn’t. They should be concerned and they shouldn’t. This war is one of many, one of a constant, countless, endless stream of them. The lives lost here are among many lives lost, through war, through inhumanity, through the natural processes of life. Is there a joke in all this? I’m sure you could find one.

Part IX: Year of Hell

How long can someone sulk for? The unquestioned, unrivalled champion Godsend can sulk for a year. He’s done it before, and he means to do it again. This whole business with the Eidolon has gotten to him, how he questioned Godsend’s choice to terminate Viper. It’s the reason he called in Brother Jack and the Staged Man. They come and then they talk about how the Eidolon is his rival, that he means as much to this campaign as Godsend himself? Has that been what he’s been proving all this time, that he’s nothing more than someone else’s equal? He has never known his origins and he’s never known a weakness. And yet, he has been felled by his pride.

Godsend has retreated to his bunker, the one he set up when he and the other heroes arrived, the grand forces he marshaled to eradicate the threat of this city. From Agog, his young stead, to Proposition, the Woman of the Mind, they all came because he asked them to, not because they trusted him, not because there was so much trouble, not because of the Eidolon. One by one, they’ve fallen, too, scores of them. Proposition dueled Loco, and while she won then, the bout left her drained, ready for the clutches of Viper, one more victim, one more opportunity. There was also Midshipman, who traveled the city as one would the ocean, who was sunk by the Piercer. This loss had been great for the old warrior Dust, but Godsend had stopped caring about that man long ago. He only ever had contempt for him, and duties. Godsend shines alone. For the twins Park and Field, who were masters of the earth, they fell together, victims of Barren Blood. For the brothers Royale and Splendor, the same fate, between the jaws of the Barracuda. Godsend exacts revenge for all. Despite his distaste for Dust, he punishes Piercer. Regardless of Blood’s invulnerability, Godsend triumphs. His reward is contempt. Nothing, it seems, is good enough.

Others will carry on this fight now, others will toil in the war. He is mindless now of the casualties, mindless of whether the advantage falls to his side or the other. He is mindless of his friends, mindless of his foes. He is mindless. This power of his has always come at a price, not just the price of losing those he comes to love, but for himself as well. There is always a distance between himself and those he has sworn to protect. He cannot truly live among those he champions. The Eidolon, when he lost his faith, he unknowingly confirmed this belief in Godsend, even as Godsend was planning a mortal future for the first time in his life. He had been here for decades before the tower, and had never known, even before he became known, a life approximating what he saw around him. He was always isolated, isolated from himself, isolated from others, and isolated from a future. What did he have, but a selfless devotion to mankind? Nothing. He was to give his life to the world, and receive nothing in return. The Eidolon spoke of a mounting toll, but this mortal didn’t know what there was to lose, because he actually had something. Godsend never had a thing. Godsend only ever had himself.

He had the earth, which, in the way he grew to understand had once been a form of worship widespread among the earth’s population. He imagined such a relationship, grew to embrace his mother, and his father, too, immortals both of them. His wife had bore him a son, and that son had been sent off before the war. He was ten years old now. Godsend had never seen him. He wondered if he was his father’s son, if this legacy, whatever it was, would be passed down. This was the reason he had taken Agog under his wing. As a mentor, Godsend had much to impart. As a man, he had nothing, and that was what Agog himself had to offer.

As he had never felt with the Eidolon, as a part of that Tandem, Godsend felt a kinship with Agog, who now decides to retreat along with him. There is much still to achieve, a goal Godsend himself has set for himself, but that is some time off. Perhaps someone else will accomplish it for him in the meantime, someone else will slay Malcolm Bidd. He cannot define his relationship with Agog. It is something he never had even with his wife. He would move heaven and earth, and not merely slay Viper, for Agog. But there is no danger there now. Now both of them retreat behind the lines. It is the Eidolon who has caused this, the Eidolon who has angered Godsend into this retreat. They believe this man, this mortal, was worth rallying behind. So let them. See what it will get them. They all came for a war, even though there are other matters elsewhere, even at home, that would offer equal interest. Godsend could direct his attention to these places. He doesn’t. He prefers to remain here, to stay here and sulk.

He has done this before, and before, again, it was because of the Eidolon, who was once his closest ally. In another war, they could not seem to defeat Rancor, the same Rancor whose death had created this war. Again and again they fought him, thwarted him even, but never definitely. This was, as they assumed, what heroes did. They fought villains they’d seen before because each were equal matches for the other. The public cheered at every encounter, because the more familiar, the easier to appreciate. It didn’t matter that what it really meant was continual failure. Godsend only appreciated these moments when Rancor actually presented a new challenge. That was what Viper had once been, not simply a meddler, a mastermind, but a challenge, a new device for Rancor to handle, to deliver unto the Tandem. He attacked the Eidolon first, of course, managing to subdue him so that he would be bait for another villain, called Talisman, the Jailer. If Godsend was ever going to have a weakness, it was against this man, who had the key to a prison that would lock them both up for eternity. There would be no escaping.

For the first time, Godsend felt resentment toward his friend. He had never felt fear before, yet this Talisman provoked great fear in him. He didn’t know if he could avoid the fate set before him, because he had never heard anyone triumph over the Jailer. They had all of them been ensnared within his medallion, trapped forever in the prison of the damned. If the Eidolon could have defeated Viper in the first place, and how hard could that have been? This would never have presented itself. He didn’t sink away, however, not yet. He came, pushed aside Viper, ignoring whatever insignificant threat he might have been, and took on Talisman, while the Eidolon lay prone before them. To eliminate Godsend had been the plan all along. The Eidolon was nothing. When he finally came to, Godsend had wrested control of the medallion from Talisman, who himself had been a formidable challenge. All the time Godsend had feared that item, and now he would destroy it, and thus end its threat forever. It was the Eidolon who stopped him.

“You will be condemning the lives of every one of his previous victims,” he said. “Do you really want that blood on your hands? You’ve defeated Talisman. That was the easy part. Now do the right thing, and allow those souls a chance.”

Godsend couldn’t believe it when he heard it. The audacity of the man. “We know that there is no escape. He’s said so himself.”

“That’s what he knows,” the Eidolon said. “But who’s to say he knows everything? My own history of that medallion goes back centuries. Do you want to know how old our friend is? He should have a birth certificate that you could easily produce in court, without raising any suspicions. He is an expert in its use, but Talisman is not an expert in the medallion. I’ve heard him say so himself. You can even ask Viper. Why do you think I risked any of this in the first place, Godsend? I came for answers, not for these men.”

“You risked your life on what, a hunch?” Godsend said.

“I risked nothing,” the Eidolon said. “I already knew more than both of them combined. This was a confirmation. Do you know what their brilliant plan was going to be, after defeating us? They were simply going to give the medallion to Rancor, as a trophy. A trophy, Godsend. Rancor knows even less about this thing than you do. You want to call this a risk? Go right ahead.”

Godsend indeed called it a risk, an unnecessary gamble on his ally’s part, and put an end to their adventuring for a year, the first time a crack appeared in the Tandem, which would eventually fracture completely. It would be the Eidolon who would seek to mend it, even though he wouldn’t admit it, even in the moments before his final disappearance. It was Godsend who knew this time, what Barracuda had been planning. He stood by and did nothing. Why should he? The alliance was shattered. The Eidolon was holding on to what? To hope? There was no hope anymore. Godsend stepped away, not just from the Tandem, but from all the problems of this planet. He went into deep space then, perhaps in search of his origins.

When he returned, he found Ulysses Kincaid at the height of his powers, having convinced the world that Godsend had abandoned it. When they finally confronted each other again, Kincaid threatened everything Godsend had stood for in his time as champion, having remade so much of it in his, Kincaid’s, own image. In many ways, it was that year, more than any other, that had helped to create this war, since Kincaid secretly funded every operation that had rippled together to create this catastrophe. The murder of Rancor? Viper, a man of meager funds himself, had help from Kincaid, who could afford to lose a rival. Malcolm Bidd’s chief financial backer during his early campaigns? Kincaid, who would have run for president if he’d thought it wouldn’t compromise his lifestyle. He could have won, but he knew too many scandals would follow him. And yet, after that year, after that confrontation, Kincaid, too, slipped away.

Godsend always put so much responsibility on himself. In time, he began to wonder if, as the hero the public most admired, he had a responsibility greater than all the others, a responsibility that asked him to do things others wouldn’t do. He began to wonder if he shouldn’t merely deter threats rather than end them. To end them would be to end the loop that caused needless destruction and hardship, which the same foes caused in the same fights time and time again. Why allow that to happen? Didn’t he have the calling to put an end to those threats? He didn’t let this be known to anyone else. Just as he kept a secret from his own wife, when he attempted to lead a mortal existence, he kept this to himself, this suspicion. He had noticed it before, in the back of his mind, but he had always assumed that a noble champion wouldn’t do such things. Even though it was what, in times past, had been expected. There was no mercy in allowing threats to exist then.

A troubled Godsend broods on these thoughts, these memories, trophies of his victories all around him: Viper’s armor, Piercer’s golden staff, among others. He considers what his absence from the battlefield means again, and then turns the thought away, disgusted. Does he believe that the Eidolon has really been defeated? How should he know? It is probably another of his elaborate plans, more elaborate than the mind of the Staged Man would imagine, nothing more. This disgusts Godsend, too, that he could ever have trusted the Eidolon, much less called him an ally, a friend, even. This was a weakness he is glad to have shaken loose. It will only make him stronger. He has already done his part here, he will already be remembered as the greatest champion of this war, and not just of this generation. They will miss what he has done for them, but they have brought this on themselves. The Eidolon, however, he is done with him, at last. He should have severed those ties a long time ago.

***

Time slows in a vacuum. You can no longer perceive it, locked away from all indications of its motion, its constant motion. That is something, among many things, that Cotton Colinaude, the Eidolon, becomes more aware of as he knows time passes, sealed away in the locker, below the mighty waters of the Palomar. There can be only so much air left, and yet he knows a significant amount of time must have passed by now. How have things led to this, really led to it, he wonders, not just in the sense that he allowed Clayton Neville to set this trap. He has allowed himself to fall into traps before, always with a purpose in mind. He feels there was a purpose this time, too, but he can no longer remember it. Why did he allow himself to fall?

In the moments after his last conversation with Godsend, Cotton was more vulnerable than he had ever been. He had been defeated, truly defeated, by Viper, as he had never been before. Not even at the revealing of the betrayal had Cotton felt himself defeated by this man. Physically, emotionally, Cotton had been defeated. It was Viper’s last plan, for whatever new calculation, to be murdered by Godsend, that Cotton becomes more and more sure of as time, in its way, passes. It was Viper’s plan, and Cotton couldn’t prevent it from happening. He had never let that happen before. Other people called this a war, but what Cotton held it as was a continuing strain, one that had begun long before the death of the Cad, the death of Rancor, or even the death of William Tekamthi. No, it wasn’t a war, it was a strain, one that stretched out long before any of this, before the Eidolon, before the Blue Beacon, before Sidewinder, before everyone, before everything.

In his dying moments, as he now considers them, Cotton has finally embraced the realist philosophy so many have tried to convince him of, a philosophy that influenced him in so many ways he never understood. He became the Eidolon because he thought he could do some good, and when he thought he could no longer do that, when he came to believe that he was doing more harm than good, he gave up the Eidolon, and only took him up twice more. These moments are among the last.

Neville had set his trap on the subway. This was a man who’d found out everything, much as Viper had done. Cotton is at peace with this, too, because he has discovered that secrets are not things to be exposed, but to be shared. They aren’t hidden because they need to be, but because someone wants them to be, and because it is this way, they can’t hurt those who don’t willingly admit them. Viper had no power over Cotton even after revealing who Peter Cooley really was, because it was Cotton who then possessed it. Viper had given away his greatest asset. For what? On the subway, Cotton was given as bait Viper’s files, which he was meant to find value in because, in Neville’s mind, these would be the key to unraveling everything Viper had set in motion. In a way, Cotton did walk into this trap, but only because he was intrigued. He wanted to know where Neville was going with this. He didn’t need the information, because he already had it. Much of Viper’s notes indicated the Palomar, which was apparently an exit strategy in case anything went wrong, as being of great importance. Few considered it remarkable, why not take advantage of it? That was the reasoning behind this whole conflict. Cotton realizes that. He is no longer angry about it. This isn’t a war because it is only an effort to defeat one man. In one sense, that has already been accomplished. Despite himself, despite what he wishes would have happened, Cotton understands that. Viper has finally been defeated. Godsend was right about that. But his death wasn’t the end. By the shores of the Palomar, Cotton discovered a boat, which Viper seemed to have lived out of in the last few years. This was the trap. A failsafe, put in place not by Neville but by Viper himself, ensnared Cotton, locking him away, releasing him from the boat, yes, but down into the muddy bed of the river.

This failsafe had been in Viper’s notes. Cotton had remarked on it particularly, even. He fell into the trap, because he didn’t see it coming. Some of Cotton’s thoughts return to the subway. He stayed there for a while, riding it with no destination in mind, in memory of a friend. Its constant motion, its restlessness, comforted him in those moments. He doesn’t have that now. The locker doesn’t allow him to feel the Palomar around him. All he can feel are the walls around him, and his own body, in his costume, within the walls. He can feel his breathing, too. This alone brings him back to the subway car. He allows it to center him when he begins to panic, because he does that, every now and again, in this quiet moments that seem to have no end. He doesn’t know what dying feels like, he can’t even imagine it. He doesn’t know how near he is to it, to his own end. He remembers a coin he once took for himself, sewed into this costume. It’s here, somewhere. He couldn’t remember, after retrieving it the day he came out of his psychosis, where he’d sewn it, but he could remember the act. He still remembers it. The woman who made the physical appearance of the Eidolon, the woman so closely connected to a family he long ago left behind, he tries to imagine her creating this costume now, how she sewed it herself. Would she remember every stitch? If she had put that coin in here, would she know where to look.

It’s ridiculous, really, not knowing where that coin is. He should be able to feel it, for no other reason than the connection he knows he has to it, the meaning that emblazoned itself into his memory. He chastised Godsend for his action. No one chastised him. Maybe the coin fell out somehow, maybe he did not do as good a job as he thought. Maybe it’s still in the grave, the grave he made for the boy, so long ago. Cotton has already sworn to himself that he’s finally made his piece. The longer he remains like this, the more time he has to think. That has never been kind to him, time. He doesn’t know what it looks like. He doesn’t know how long this war, if indeed it is one as they all say, has been raging, how long he’s been in here, how long he has been the Eidolon. He doesn’t even know how old he is. He stopped paying attention to that long ago. He had to dedicate himself. What business did he have with birthdays? To be selfless is to give of the self. He has made many sacrifices, and each of them has cost him. He had needed Godsend because Godsend could give him what no one else could: vindication. Why could Godsend not understand that? Why did Cotton himself throw that away?

Peace was the reason Cotton gave up on the Eidolon, why he never resumed the life he had assumed for himself. He wanted peace of mind. His experience as Balthazar Romero, taking on a fictional life, was enough to scare him. He didn’t need the peace Dust, Tekamthi, Hopper, anyone, preached at him. He needed peace with himself. He understood what each of them had been trying to tell him. He also understood what each of them, in their own way, represented, the very life he took on from that moment. Each of them had withdrawn into a passive existence. They wanted him to find his peace, and they thought it meant it would mean something different for him than it had for them. Well, they had been wrong. And they had been right. He was supposed to have learned from them, not emulate. He hadn’t learned from his mentor, Elijah Humbert, the Sidewinder, either. He hadn’t learned from Switchblade, the suicidal maniac who, in the end, sacrificed himself.

Is that what Cotton is doing now? How can he know? Should he? Will his death, if that is what it should be, affect the course of this conflict for the better? He wants to let go of the notions that he alone can save the day. That was always his problem, even when he was told, as a young boy, that this is what he had really done. He hadn’t believed it, because he couldn’t remember. Cotton, a hero? That could never be. How could he have done it? Cotton is powerless. Cotton has always been powerless, and he will die powerless. Is this not, in the end, the only truth?

Or is simply the only thing he will accept? He is left alone, once again, in these timeless moments, when the world has ceased, has silenced itself. Has he made a difference, and if he has, was it for the better? That is what he would like to, more than anything, know, in these moments he believes are his last. He has always wanted to know, that’s the reason he became the Eidolon in the first place. He learned of others, and so he wanted to know if he, too, would be known. He decided the means, but he couldn’t decide the way. That was, in the end, his greatest struggle, because it haunted his every thought, his every action, until he let it, finally, overtake him. To defeat it again, he retreated. To where? Ultimately, to here, to this locker beneath the Palomar.

He wishes, once more, that he could look about him, to see this figure that he’s become. He wants to study it, maybe see it from someone else’s eyes, or perhaps his own, for the first time. Who is the Eidolon? What worth has he had in his time on this world? There is no light here, only darkness. For so long, he craved the darkness because it allowed him to carry on with his duties unimpeded, unrecognized and unfazed. He existed in his own mind, in the darkness he created for himself, too. Why was it s comforting then? And why can’t he find that now? He listens to his own heartbeat, its rhythms that are so constant. He listens to his breathing, feels his chest rise and fall, rise and fall. He feels the walls around him, feels the cape, between the gloves he has still not removed. He is preserving himself.

There is a world out there, a war, as they call it, raging, and yet Cotton is no longer a part of it. Has he tried to escape? Of course he has. But even if he does, there are greater obstacles still. There is the Palomar, and all the waits beyond it. Is he afraid? Not for the first time…

Part VIII: Scorpion

When Brother Jack received his summons, he came almost immediately. In this case, “came almost immediately” means that there were significant events that prevented him from departing right away. First and foremost of them was Jack’s encounter with a mysterious girl, wrapped in a scarlet cloak. All he could see were enchanting, fierce eyes, which he immediately recognized, but he didn’t know from where.

The other chief reason was that he was in the middle of a revolution of his own. This woman seemed come to aid him in a struggle of insurgents who claimed they were being oppressed. Calling themselves the Merry Brites, they had been threatening for some time to bring their own form of chaos to Jack’s country. Jack had been assigned guardian duty, as it were. When word reached his ear, he was to alert the population of whatever town he happened to have found himself in. For months, Jack had been a step or three, at best, ahead of the Merry Brites, always surrounded by pilgrims keeping watch with him in his holy mission. This woman was the latest of these, and he decided to call her, since she wouldn’t give him her own name, Sister Rose. It was she who awoke him, so he could once more sound the alarm, and prepare another community.

The Merry Brites were harmless, really, other than their opinion that they were representing a greater cause, that they were only making the world aware of an injustice done to them, and in turn, others like them. They were a minority, and didn’t feel like they should be ignored, or mistreated because of it. They could each of them be known for the distinctive gloves they wore, each missing index fingers, which they had been forbidden by the government, their children in school told to leave them at home. It was something they would not put up with, and yet it fell to Brother Jack to fall in against them, whatever their cause. He was not to allow anarchy to befall the country, and so he would have to be there each time the Merry Brites came to town to spread their message further. He had never engaged in a single scuffle with them in the three years he’d been at this, and yet, it continued. Each year, the public seemed less interested. The Merry Brites happened to have connections to other activities around the globe. In Traverse, Alabama, their sects were waging a war, championed by Viper, until his death, on whose authority they’d come to after Rancor’s own death. Brother Jack had vested interests, too, but chose to remain in his own country, with his own concerns, until he received his summons, because he was eager to leave this fight to others. He saw what was happening there, and he didn’t want a part in it.

It was Dust who came to Jack, offering an impassioned plea. At this time, Jack had not yet heard of Dust’s own misfortune in the war, but he was impressed enough at this old warrior to be on his way. Others would carry on his mission in his own country; Sister Rose would come with him, too.

So Brother Jack set out to join the conflict, take sides with old allies, and see what he could do. Dust was no mere ally, but a blood relation, a descendent from brothers gone exploring centuries ago. This was a motivation, too. In a way, Brother Jack went to another home. He brought his peculiar powers with him. Like Dust’s son, Brother Jack has the ability to produce nightmares in his victims, only it isn’t something he has to concentrate on, but produce automatically. He lulls them to sleep for a moment, but the dreams that come stay long after they wake again, and they are nightmares because they are the victim’s worst acts repeated for them over and over again. Were they able to break the loop, as some have done, they are never the same again. They will repent immediately, and lead the life they would have had those moments never happened in the first place. Most, however, go mad. With such a power, Jack seeks to use it sparingly. It’s the reason why he agreed to take on the Merry Brites mission in the first place, the reason he finds Sister Rose to intoxicating. She represents a chance for Jack himself to start over. He can’t even explain why, but he can see it in those eyes, the eyes that bewitch him even when he doesn’t see them. He can’t escape this woman, even though she has promised to leave him soon. She has been with him, in her own way, for over a year now. She is not always at his side, and he doesn’t know what she does when she isn’t. She’s said she has another allegiance, another fate to follow, but that doesn’t matter to Jack. She has even followed him here to this new phase in his life, this war. Did she have to? It was only when they arrived that he found out she would be leaving him, and he became desperate, almost, to retain her. He believes that he needs her. He also knows that he probably will never see her again, before long. He doesn’t know what to do with all the time in between.

“Rose,” he says, when they happen to cross paths again. In this new place, they hardly see each other any more. He has been taking on new missions, and they are always taking away from his time with her. “You must have heard about Texas.”

“I can’t believe what’s going on there,” Rose says. “Can you believe they got back together, after everything that happened?”

“I didn’t think they could,” Jack says. He wants to say so much more, but he can’t bring himself to, and he knows what this costs him. “Texas almost makes this place look dull, doesn’t it?”

“Yeah,” Rose says. He wishes he knew her real name. “So anyway, I was thinking, wouldn’t it be great to have a problem like that, to have all that happen and still be able to reconnect like that? I just think it’s so romantic.”

There are a million things he wants to say right now. He settles for, “Definitely. Then there’s what’s-his-name, the one who had to save that girl in the elevator. It was his first time and everything.”

“I don’t remember him,” Rose says.

“Really?” Jack wishes he could remember the guy’s name. Rose knows this stuff so much better than him, but she can’t remember this one person. Maybe she doesn’t know him from the same circumstances he does? Maybe she missed that? Anyway, he has to go. There are other matters at hand, too, always different directions to pull them in. He gives a nod, but she happens to have turned away. She doesn’t see it, but he’s already gone when she turns to him again.

There are always other things to concentrate on, that’s not a problem, but Jack is always returning to the thought of her. Is any of it real, or is it all a figment of his imagination? Does he press the issue, is it worth it? Has he simply misunderstood everything? But there are always other matters. The Staged Man, who entered this fray at about the same time, has just informed him that there’s a major new menace, who’s putting a lot of fire under the cause of the opposition. There’s a war going on. Isn’t that enough for Jack to worry about? Dividing his attention is not exactly going to help his cause, now is it? So apparently Boy Benjamin, the charming name for the head heavy in this city, has a new champion, who could very well turn the tide in these dicey waters. Keep your head in the game, Jack tells himself. Forget about her for a moment. You don’t even know her. She doesn’t know you. After all this time? If there were anything, there’d already be more between you than stories from some far off land, which might as well not even be real for all the impact it has on your own lives.

What Staged Man can tell Jack about this new warrior isn’t much. She’s just arrived and she fights like an Amazon, and her greatest weapon is surprise. Her victims never see her coming. Her name is, apparently, Gonzalez Inarittu.

Brother Jack actually volunteers to take her on, even though he knows other may be more capable of taking her down, such as Godsend, but he’s been occupied in other matters. Word is he hasn’t even been fighting since the incident with the Eidolon, since Jack and Staged Man, in fact, arrived. He takes on this challenge both because he wants to, and because he seemingly doesn’t have another choice. His first glimpse of her is from the back, but even in this, he knows instantly. His Rose is Inarittu. He wants to ask her why, but can’t bring himself to that, either. He can see it in her eyes, anyway. This moment was the reason she sought him out in the first place. It was never about the Merry Brites, never about the pilgrimage. “I came to kill you,” she finally says. “And isn’t it obvious? Hasn’t it always been? That was all I was meant to do, Jack. I am a killer, I am a scorpion. Can you feel my sting?”

“Rose…” he says, even as he prepares his powers. He puts her to sleep, and brings on the nightmare, which he doesn’t know. He never knows, and he’s never wanted to know before, never wanted to know worse. How could this happen? What did he do to deserve this? He can feel her sting even now. They’ve gotten each other, they’ve finally communicated, in this final moment. Will either ever be the same again? He can tell it isn’t fatal, and he can tell his powers won’t work on her as they have worked on others in the past, but he knows everything will change now. Everything will have been lost, gone, gone, gone. Now all they can do is wait for the world to change. Has it ever been this horrible? He can’t imagine it, no, not in this moment, he doesn’t want to. All his life, and now this. He supposes that this is some kind of victory, perhaps the greatest one he’s ever achieved, and maybe it’ll help his side, maybe it helps hers, too, maybe it doesn’t actually help either side. That doesn’t matter, either. The only thing that matters is this moment, because he can’t believe it. How did it all come to this?

Days will pass, and this moment will longer. It will probably linger for years, long after the war has ended. Maybe this moment will have made a difference, maybe it won’t, but things are going to change, and there’s no preventing that, not anymore. Something was lost here, and maybe something gained, too, but for now, all Jack can think of is what was lost, because that’s the only thing he can imagine, the only thing he can bring himself to think of. His Rose, his Inarittu. He at least knows her name now, right? Is that enough, is it vindication, even at its cost? He can imagine finding comfort in that, in time, but not right now. For right now, there is only pain, because it’s the only thing he knows will help, in the end. He can’t stand that thought, but he knows it’s true. There is some worth in it, there is a benefit. He doesn’t like it, he wishes it weren’t necessary, but there it is, right here, right now, and he has to deal with it. So that’s what he’s going to do.

Part VII: The Once and Future World

Idiot Box is the sort of person who doesn’t see it coming. They ask for it, a million times a day, but they just don’t see it coming. Idiot Box managed to capture this elusive emotion by thinking he was going to take over Cockeye’s neighborhood. It’s a little known fact that Cockeye isn’t even from Traverse. He was born here, yes, but he spent the first three years of his life tucked away in McGregor, Illinois. He turned four in Alabama, and he figures he may eventually return to the old state, even though he has ambitions for other destinations. He never met a prospect he didn’t like, but he doesn’t know what he’s going to actually become, because he writes. Cockeye writes because he doesn’t know what else to do. He’s a vigilante, yes, but that doesn’t pay the bills, either. Mostly, he inhabits space, and Idiot Box thinks he’s going to take that from him. Idiot Box has another thing coming.

In a prior life, owning this neighborhood meant something completely different. Cockeye was never in a position where he could say such things, but he was a part of that movement. He knew all the stories that said white boys don’t have gangs around here, but he’s heard, and told, so many stories that they become as true as fiction. He knows what life here is like, the great white way, the good old life. Everyone is quick to help out. You can sit outside in a rocking chair at the finer establishments. That and the fact that there’s a latent hostility to anything unfamiliar. It’s everywhere, but it’s here. Cockeye understands this, and he understands who this Idiot Box is. He’s the enemy, and at this time, the enemy means war. There’s nothing for him to do but declare it. There’s also one thing. He’s a vigilante in theory, a hero in training, if you will, and self-taught at that. Some of them will take you under their wing, but the majority of the establishment will leave you behind and hope you can fend for yourself. That happens to be how Cockeye was conceived in the first place. He used to be bitter about it, but things had a way of steering him in more useful directions. He used to be angry, heck, can still sometimes reach new heights of anger, of despair. But he’s feeling, these days, like he can handle it better because he can see his future more clearly. Vision is key to the future.

He also happens to be alone. Cockeye wasn’t always alone. He has a father he’s estranged from, but he’s seen worse days between them. He used to be particularly angry about this, because someone had to point out how miserable things really were in his family. That was the day he snapped, that Cockeye. He spent so much time trying to figure that out, he found the man again, asked for answers, wasn’t given any. He found other things, things that facilitated his journey to becoming Cockeye. Cockeye, another vigilante, another hero without any powers at all. He’s not even much of a fighter, but he scraps along. That’s a lot of what he’s done all his life, maybe not in the sense that he’s been in so many fights that he knows his way around them. He’s never been in a single fight, which of course makes a confrontation he knows is coming with Idiot Box that much more of a question mark.

He’s never had anything handed to him, not outright. He’s stumbled into a few things here and there, but to never have been given the kinds of advantages he hears about, reads about, can see around him, has been a constant source of frustration. He’s even had a few relationships that he thought might lead to that kind of advantage, but they never work out. The closest one came to a dead end when he realized the man was dead, but he was able to capitalize anyway. He found so much stuff that was just left behind. Some of it was more than he wanted to know.

But still, he doesn’t like to concentrate on such things, especially when there are more pressing matters at hand, such as Idiot Box. He’s stepped into Cockeye’s turf, the little spot of earth he’s claimed as his own, to defend against predators. He’s the shepherd to a flock that doesn’t know him, but he’s there. He’s made the commitment, even sent out messages. The first one came as a warning, a note he hastily scribbled out after watching police drag away suspects he’d been watching for a week. He knew what was really going on, and he said so in the note, which he left in the jacket one of the officers left in the squad car, one of those look-at-me reflector-themed numbers. These mooks were innocent of everything but being imbeciles. All they’d really been doing was getting high. He’d known to surveillance them because he’d once included himself in their numbers. They would never have done anything serious, not even in the days they used to hire themselves out as ground-level thugs to the local heavies, asking questions of their own, for answers they couldn’t care less about. They were dangerous in those days, but more danger to themselves than anyone else.

Cockeye should know. That’s how all this happened. He no longer regrets any of it, because it led him to a better life than he could have ever known, to a peace of mind he could have never known without it. He transformed himself from a nobody known as Lincoln Mather, called Random Red, into a self-styled avenger, one who needn’t worry about his life being ruined for nothing. His old gang, innocent of what the boys in blue suspected them, but guilty on so many other levels. They’re still in lockup. Now all he has to worry about is a war. How did that even happen? He had been aware of it for years, but never concerned himself with the reality of it. He was far from it, even if it was in his own city. It never affected him, not with all the battles reported in the Traverse Tracks, which he began reading again, a paper he used to deliver, because of this war. He’s got stacks of it in his room now, copies he’s saved because of articles he finds historically pertinent. The one from Xenon’s death? It holds a special place.

He’s heard a lot about the war. In his neighborhood, as Lincoln, he can move about it and find out what the locals are thinking. He doesn’t consider himself one of them, and he understands why when he hears people talking about what Traverse means to them, how they sympathize with men like Viper, Benjamin Russ, and the mayor, Malcolm Bidd, even though they oppose famous heroes like Godsend, Dust, and The Eidolon. Cockeye’s papers know who’s on what side, who’s the attacker and who’s defending home soil. That’s how it’s reported, by newsmen and streetwalkers alike. It’s a war, except it’s not between heroes and villains, but home and away teams. It’s almost like a game. And the home team is the easy one to root for. Cockeye never has, not even when he seemed to be a part of it. He knew he didn’t belong then, and he knows he doesn’t want to now. But he understands what everyone means, he understands both sides. Cockeye exists to protect something, and now that he’s being threatened, he wants to put up a fight. Does it matter that he can name his foe? Surely Idiot Box can say the same thing. Surely Idiot Box thinks he’s only defending something, too.

From what Cockeye knows, Idiot Box has a claim to this neighborhood, too. He’s familiar with its virtues, its vices. He’s a product of its attributes, much as Cockeye is. Like Cockeye, he’s seems late in the game in claiming it, or at least staking that claim. Cockeye came first, sure, but now here’s Idiot Box, who knows how to fight. His own dad owned the local gym, until it closed. Used to box, naturally. The son specializes in pounding his opponents into submission, with no real finesse to it, just so the job gets done. Idiot Box, then. Cockeye doesn’t know if that’s a self-made moniker, or if someone gave it to him, and he doesn’t care. Regardless, he’s going to become very familiar with the message behind it. He’s going to enter the fray, he’s going to fight this man, in this war, because of this war.

Because of it? Really? Cockeye’s had the benefit of sitting on the sideline all these years. While others have been fighting, experiencing what this war really is, he’s been sitting on the sideline and thinking. He knows what the war means to him. Plenty others think it’s a cause better left unchallenged. They want the costumed folks to just give up, already, retreat, whatever, go home. They’re needed for other things, or maybe, too, to just have a break, not risk their lives for a change. So many have died already. The names almost become meaningless, unless you happen to have a personal connection to them. If they’re needed again here, then they can come back. But this war, this meaningless war, waged over what? a trophy? someone’s grudge? has got to go away already. There’s just no winning it, and everyone knows how clear that is. The leader of the home team is gone, even, executed, as it were. For Cockeye, that’s not this war. He’s about to become a part of it, and not because someone drafted him, but because he’s chosen to. It’s never been about winning something, unless the victory means the world will be a safer place, with a little more order to it. Order can’t be bad, can it? He sees what kind of order there is now, and doesn’t like it. In his neighborhood, he hears whimpers at night, whimpers that seem to say, does the morning really have to come? That feeling, to him, is the worst, even in a world that knows so many who won’t wake up in the morning for a thousand worse reasons. Cockeye believes that you should always look forward to another day, and he should know, having so many times feared them. He decided to become a champion so he could do his part in making that feeling go away, even if in only one person, even if only in himself. The point in this war? There’s no point, there never is in war. War is destruction. Cockeye sees in it, though, a chance to build, too.

This neighborhood of his, yes, he has claimed it, claimed it so he can see it become, one day, a place where his own past can’t be duplicated. He became Cockeye so he could begin to struggle against those who would rather see it stay the way it is, a place where boys cry themselves to sleep at night, where their fathers can’t live up to the duties they’re meant for because they’re too busy still trying to make their own lives work out. Now he’s got to prepare to face the consequences. Now he’s got to prepare to fight Idiot Box. It’s his first fight in this war, his first fight as a vigilante. For ten years now, he’s been headed down this road, preparing himself for the day his new resolve would overtake his dreams, when he could seize the destiny he knew he wanted. The idea of Cockeye was impregnated for so long within him, he could imagine everything about this hero, this champion, without seeing any of it in reality. He would train, a little, but he trusted his instincts most of all, because he knew that they would be the only things that would be with him in the end. In the end, all he has is himself.

Within the past couple of months, he has stepped up his preparation, even though he has been doing things for a few years now, things he knows to have been helpful, things that haven’t been so different from what he is today, this figure he calls Cockeye, small things. He’s never allowed himself to call these activities vigilantism. He reserves such thoughts for others, because he’s never done anything great, anything he’s found in the paper, in the Tracks. He’s helped others, sure, he even believes he’s assisted the Eidolon, even, the Eidolon, who put all this in motion. Imagine! But very soon now, Cockeye is going to make his debut as a functional reality, as a figure tested and not just conceived. Fights are everything. Heroes aren’t really heroes until they’ve confronted enemies. They can do all the good deeds they want, but until they’ve been in a fight no one is going to respect them, remember them, or expect them. Heroes don’t just wait for fights, either, and that’s why they’re such interesting figures, why they get talked about so much. Sometimes when they do go looking, their image changes, and they may end up being remembered more for that than for what they really are. This doesn’t concern Cockeye. Idiot Box hasn’t, technically, provoked him yet. But he’s still going to do this, have this fight. It’s the only thing that can happen now. It’s either hold this ground, or yield it, surrender it. Can you imagine? Idiot Box isn’t a major figure by any measure. No one will have heard of him when the news gets out what happened. This doesn’t concern Cockeye, either.

He does have one concern, though. The source of his power, so to speak, does, the lair of the Dread Poet, which his discovery of prompted, above all, the change of direction in his life. When he found that place, deep below the earth, beyond darkness, past telling, he discovered a new direction that had seemingly been mapped out for him. The Dread Poet’s lair? It was the stuff of legend, and to have found it was to vindicate Cockeye’s existence. In his youth, Cockeye had always believed in destiny, yes, but also in the power of redemption, and that’s what he found in the Dread Poet’s lair. All the files he found, meticulously kept, the journals, the books, each of them seemed to have been created out of a need to rejuvenate the earth. Rejuvenate for what? There were files on every aspect of the city, the journals will filled with the Dread Poet’s own recollections, and the books covered every subject imaginable. Cockeye had somehow always known how important Traverse was, and this was a confirmation.

In the files there were copies of every Traverse Tracks, dating from its very inception to the last edition printed before the Dread Poet’s death. Cockeye poured over all of these. For months, years, all he did was read. He ignored the rest of the world. He was aware of the world and yet he was not a part of it, because there was another layer that concerned him, interested him, so much more. This was his education, his emergence into the wider world, all laid out, as if by design, before him. Gradually, he became aware that he could trace his own life, too, when he came upon the issues devoted to the Eidolon’s mysterious disappearance. He had been a part of that catharsis, too. He never found himself, of course, in those words, but he could follow his journey through them all the same. He began reading back into the past, retracing his life backward, until he discovered a startling fact. There was no record of his birth. He knew he’d been born here. Why wasn’t it here? Why was there such an oversight? He poured still further, trying to confirm a thought he couldn’t understand. He traced lives from birth to death, countless of them. It bothered him that he couldn’t find that one, stupid notice. He could have just written it down as a mistake, but then he remembered how his father had always talked about how remarkable a birth it had been, a miracle. Nowhere in the paper, nowhere in the notes. He began to suspect that the Dread Poet might have known something, that his discovery of this lair really had been destiny.

But what did it mean? It meant that Cockeye had been adopted. His life had been, on all accounts, a lie. This filled him with new resolve, because he began to embrace that lie as never before. That was when he reconnected with his father, or at least the man he had known for so long by that name. He looked back wistfully at the event that had caused his life to turn around, the day the Eidolon told him what a waste his father had been. When he had completed this journey, Cockeye burned the Dread Poet’s lair, and began anew.

Recently he has become aware that his new life came about because of a decision, and so it has been with a newfound resolution that he has taken on this role, this challenge. He sees now that there are no answers, just questions he is going to have to deal with, no matter how angry or happy they make him, how much trouble he can get in because of them. Idiot Box he’s not afraid of. He’s going to survive this, because he knows there are other challenges ahead. He wants to track someone down, someone he knows is out there, even though he doesn’t know who they are, or why they are important. They will have more questions for him, that’s all he knows, questions that will lead to more questions, until the day he dies. Because this is wartime, he knows there are no guarantees.

“So,” he begins, “it looks the day has finally arrived.”

Staring back at him is Idiot Box himself. Neither is dressed very elegantly; Cockeye in a blue track suit, Box in something he found in an army surplus store. Cockeye has dropped in on him in his own home, an apartment that, ten years ago, looked better, but only slightly, not even owing to anything Box himself may have contributed with his characteristically careless lifestyle, boxes and bottles being some of the main things noticeable. That he’s in his uniform already is one key to his state of mind. The environment is another. “You’ve got some nerve, punk,” are words that serve as more indications. Cockeye isn’t concerned.

“You don’t know this, but you’ve had this coming for months” he says. “You think you own this place, that you have a right. You’re wrong. You forfeited that right the day you decided you were going to be so ridiculously reckless about it. You can’t take what’s not yours, right? And you especially can’t take something when you’re going to treat it so badly. You claimed this place, and the first thing you did was round up a few of its residents and shoot their motherfucking brains out. Why did they deserve that? Because they were a threat, to whatever pea-brained shit was rolling around your sorry ass that day. I actually pity you. I’m here talking all this shit and you’re actually letting me get away with it. Well, here you go, asshole.”

He takes Idiot Box out without a fight, just like that. He does it so easily because he does it with a bullet, right to the kneecap. No leg, no heft behind the punch, or so he correctly figured when he was planning this. Cockeye wins. Idiot Box is already crying when his own phone is used to call the medics, and the police. Cockeye would almost do more, but he’s already planning his victory speech, which he’s going to deliver once the news gets out what happened here today. Everyone’s going to hear, and then they’re all going to gather, at the local bar, at Tin Car, which Cockeye owns. Not much of a fight, but it’s a victory. He’s taken down his first foe. He knows what everyone’s going to say about his chosen method, everyone who counts, but it’s something he’s willing to live with. It’s for the right cause. Everyone has their weapons. He’s chosen one that’s a little out of the usual for his line of work, but he’s not playing by rules because they don’t really exist. It was only ever a code. In wartime, though, things change. It’s his first action as a hero, basically, and people will say he didn’t choose it very carefully, but what he’ll say to them, if he has half the chance, is that it doesn’t matter. That’s going to be a part of his speech, too. It doesn’t matter. He won, that’s all there is to it. He’s prepared to deal with the consequences, because that’s all he’s been doing all his life. He’s won this fight, and chosen this manner to do so, because it was the strategy that worked, the strategy that was best against this foe. He had it all figured out, and it worked, so easily. Idiot Box didn’t even put up a fight, just some angry words, really, and those don’t add up to much, not in this arena. And just like that, Cockeye is a combatant. He’s joined the ranks, his ranks, and not just as a number, but one of them. He doesn’t need their understanding, because he knows what he is. He’s a hero. Idiot Box is gone, before he can ruin the neighborhood. Cockeye has done his part.

There are other matters, now, other threats to face, because this one battle doesn’t mean the end of it. Idiot Box was a minor foe, almost insignificant, unless you were really paying attention. He was transforming this place into fear, and now that is over, that threat turned away. Now Cockeye has to venture out, do it again, do it so it counts for more than just a block of this city. He may even, he will, have to do that again, even here, because where there’s one, there’s always more. He’s become a part of the fight, all right. He’s beginning to understand it for the first time. He’s beginning to see what he’s gotten himself into. He sees and doesn’t have a problem, not a single one. The way he sees it, he’s needed, and that’s why Cockeye was born, and why he will persist, as others have before him. There will be obstacles, and he will face them, because he must. If life as a whole isn’t easy, there’s no reason to believe that this will be any different. So he’s going to dive right in.

The war Cockeye now enters has its own expectations for him. He’s another number in an equation that is hungry, because it is always working, always adding, subtracting, dividing, multiplying. It is a beast, and oh, is it hungry. Is there an end in sight? Not so clearly, even ten years in. The forces at work have their vested interests, sure, but they are also impersonal, removed, detached. Whatever happens here will have its ramifications, but it won’t dictate the course of the world. That course knows only one destination. It’s a journey around a sun that gives as much as it takes, and it’s a constant journey, no matter what’s happening or for how long it will continue. Once it ends, it ends, and that’s all that really matters. Cockeye is a single person on this world, and no matter who is father is and how he fares in this war, his life is not going to change the world from spinning. But there are always consequences, and for now, they do mean something. And they cannot be seen coming.